In this episode I talk about the new search box, a possible new overlay, some great listener questions and how to use Squarespace to create a niche site portfolio. LINKS TO STUFF TALKED ABOUTHere's a link to next week's training session.Here's a link to see my search box page: www.sqsp.guru/searchHere's a link to the Squarespace website, scroll down to the bottom and click on the "Powered By Squarespace" to see the overlay discussed. http://www.squarespace.com/pricing/Here's the code to hide the header and footer: AUDIO TRANSCRIPTINTRODUCTIONWelcome to the Squarespace Guru show, your weekly small business guide to building an online presence using Squarespace, the best do-it-yourself website builder. My name is Greg Sargent, and I am a Squarespace consumer platform guru and digital marketing coach...and I’m your host. My goal with this show is to talk about how to build an online presence with the tools Squarespace has created. While the platform is relatively easy to work with, It’s not always immediately obvious how to accomplish certain tasks or how to fully take advantage of the platform from a marketing perspective...so I fill you in on these things. I’ll also cover Squarespace news from the past week...and keep you on the up and up in the internet marketing world...because who really has time to watch that scene and also be an expert in your business… So just go ahead and focus on your business...and check out this show once a week to get caught up on how to use your Squarespace website to grow your influence on the web. If you have a question about Squarespace and would like for me to answer your question on the show, I’ve got a special number set up just for that. Give it a ring and leave me a message, and I’ll do my best to give you an answer on the show! The number is 615-547-8858.AD ROLL 1This week’s episode is made possible by: Get With It Digital. Squarespace is a great do it yourself web publishing platform, but sometimes you may need a little help with things, and for those times, be sure to get in touch with Get With It Digital. Web design, email marketing, social media marketing, internet advertising, content marketing and more. Get with it digital can either meet with you one-on-one and create a customized digital marketing strategy or will maintain and manage your digital marketing efforts on your behalf. With online presence packages starting at around 200 dollars a month, Get With It Digital will bring your business out of the analog world and into the ever-connected digital world. Mention the Squarespace guru show and get a free search engine optimization report for your business. Go to get with it digital dot com to get started.NEWSAlright let’s get to a little news shall we?A few months back, Squarespace introduced the Overlays concept which 1st enabled you to have a squarespace logo hover at the bottom of your website, which just laid over the top of your existing content. It’s really kind of pointless, and pretty much is just advertising for Squarespace..and I was underwhelmed by the new Overlays feature...then a few weeks later the announcement bar and mobile information bar were released. The announcement bar allows you to create a line of text that appears at the top of every page in your site. When activated it pushes the rest of your site down a little but can be dismissed by clicking on the x...and this concept is very cool because you can share a short announcement or message to your site visitors...or draw attention to something easily and quickly without being intrusive or interrupting your visitors. The mobile information bar automatically places a sweet iphone-like navigation bar at the bottom of the screen that allows visitors to get in touch with you easily. There’s a call button, an email button, a map button and an hours button. Really cool stuff! While the announcement bar and mobile information bar is cool, I don’t think Squarespace is stopping there.I’ve noticed this new footer overlay that squarespace has been using on it’s own website... it’s been there for a while now, but only recently has the code supporting this overlay changed a little. Before the overlay was named something crazy...unreadable really. But recently it’s changed to just simply “footer overlay”. And you can check it out right now, just go to any page on the Squarespace website other than the homepage, and go all the way down to the bottom of the page, and click on the “Powered by squarespace” and notice the animation of the footer getting a bit bigger and revealing a short message. Now this behavior isn’t powered by a content block, and it’s not something that is custom coded into the site...this is an overlay in the same way the announcement bar and mobile information bar are overlays. And I wouldnt be too surprised if this type of overlay doesn’t make it’s way into the consumer platform soon! Thats something I’ve been keeping an eye on, and thought I would share that with you. So maybe start thinking about what type of message you could possibly use in a space like that.Speaking of overlays...and as predicted a few weeks back, squarespace has updated the search block! For several weeks now the search block has been virtually unusable, and I got the feeling that something new was coming. and sure enough, this past week the new search is here. The great thing about the new search block is it’s not an overlay. So when you click in the search box, it doesn’t immediately go to a white page with the search field in the top left corner and a teeny tiny x in the top right. Sooo many people were confused with that implementation…This new search box, while still not performing the search in the same page as the search box is placed, when clicked...it redirects to a search page with a giant full width search box….which is still not ideal but is a definite improvement. The search page is it’s own page...so to manually get to the search page, just type out your website URL slash search. So in theory you could place a link item in the main navigation section of the squarespace manager, link it to the search page and have a search appear in the navigation bar. Theres a couple things about the search box that are really cool, You can filter search results from just one collection, Also You can See real time results as you type. So overall very cool update to the search block, still some room for improvement, but a welcome change. Definitely worth the look...oh yeah and you can change the color scheme for the search box too from light to dark.LISTENER QUESTIONS & ANSWERSAlright it’s time for some questions and answers! If you have a question about Squarespace, and would like for me to answer your question on the show, just leave me a voicemail on this special number I’ve setup just record your messages. That number is 615-547-8858 and leave me a message with your question, and I’ll play your question on the show, and do my best to give an answer.I’ve got a couple questions here...let’s see…This question comes from Catherine in Midland Michigan, let’s take a listen: [insert question audio] Ok, great questions Catherine! Thanks so much for calling in and asking those questions!So the first question was how do I hide the header and footer on landing pages. Catherine has found some code that can be injected that will hide the header and footer, but she’s hoping for a better way. And I hate to tell you this, but there’s not...if you want to hide the header and footer, the only way will be through injecting some css into the page to hide those page elements you don’t want to display.Just to shed some light on this question a little, especially if this is the first time listening to this show, a landing page is a page that you create for your website that lives in the Not Connected area of the squarespace manager. Which really just means the page isn’t linked in the main navigation of the site. The purpose of a landing page is complex, but oh so amazing once you capture the vision...and I won’t spend any time here explaining why someone may want to use a landing page, but if you’d like to know more about the why, then check out show number 7.Traditionally, landing pages are quote unquote not supposed to have headers, footers,sidebars or links to any other page on your site or links to pages on other websites because the purpose of a landing page is to generate some sort of action by the visitor. Email newsletter signup, sell a product, download an ebook whatever that action may be. And the thought process is, if the header, footer, sidebar, or some other content is present it could be a distraction and potentially prevent a conversion. So landing pages have traditionally been absent of these major site elements, only displaying the words and images and forms directly related to whatever action you want your site visitor to take.With squarespace, there’s no built in page-by-page control over whether or not the header or footer is displayed, so some manual code would need to be used to hide those elements. And it’s super easy really to inject this code, and I’ll include the two lines of code needed to hide the header and footer on your landing pages. Maybe I’ll even write a blog post about it with some visual step-by-steps. Yeah I think I’ll do that.So to answer your question Catherine, there’s really not an easier way to hide the header and footer...when you are building your landing pages, just copy and paste the code in the show notes into your page advanced settings code injection box, and you’ll be golden!Alright and the second question from Catherine was how to test the landing page once you have it created. The simple answer to this question is to get into preview mode and check it out to see how it appears to the public. And don’t forget to test it out on a smartphone and tablet too! Depending on the template you use, you may have to adjust the widths and spacing and things. Some templates do a better job than others with the responsive layouts. Since this page should not be included in the main navigation of the site, then you’ll want to give it a unique location slug for the page so you can easily find and share the url to the page when you need to, because these landing pages more than likely will be the pages you end up sharing with your audience around the web. And if this is the first show you’ve listened to be sure to listen to shows 5-9 as they build on each other and set the stage for a concept called inbound marketing or content marketing, which is the bulk of what we’ll focus on in this podcast. Obviously how to accomplish those things using Squarespace.Thank you so much Catherine for sending in those questions, great stuff! If you have a question and want me to ramble on trying answer it, call in and leave a message and we’ll see what happens!AD ROLL 2Alright, it’s time for this week’s resource spotlight, where I talk about a resource I use in my business that I love so much that I want to tell you about it.This week’s resource spotlight is MOO. And if you’ve not heard of MOO, then you’re in for a big treat! MOO is a premium print shop that creates extremely high quality business cards, post cards, mini cards, stickers, flyers, greeting cards and a bunch of other really awesome print material. If you’ve ever gotten an order from Vistaprint or another discount print shop...and immediately felt the cheap materials….you probably wished you could find a print shop to create a high quality iconic print for your business. Or if you’re like me and way too busy or too anti-social to physically go into a print shop...most of which are staffed by insanely grumpy techie nerds that treat you like cat piss if you don’t have a million dollar account… then you need to try MOO.MOO believes in the power of great design, and all their products are just stunning. Since you use Squarespace, I know you also dig modern, clean design. And your offline presence should match your online presence. When I give my MOO business cards to people, they are always trying to separate the card because they think I’ve given them two cards...but the quality of MOO cards are so amazing, you can just feel it. And when they realize that it’s not two cards, but one, theyre like ohh nice card. On several occasions I have people tell me that they typically throw business cards in the trash a few minutes after receiving them, but they can’t bring themselves to throw my card away because its such a high quality card.MOO has this product called luxe, and it’s superfine mohawk paper that they can print mini cards, which is like half a business card, standard size business cards, post cards and stationery. This paper didn’t exist before MOO, they created it...and it is beyond words awesome. I’ve won several projects due simply to my business card and stationery that my proposal was printed on.Now, it’s not cheap...so if cheap is what you're looking for go with vistaprint or the print your own kits from staples...but if you're looking to wow people and relay quality, then MOO is what you need. Go to squarespace guru dot com slash apps and scroll down. When you get to the MOO section click give it a try. You can build your own print job, upload your own designs or use one of their pre made templates. Check it out and tell me what you think. I think you’ll dig it.MAIN MONOLOGUE:Just a reminder you can catch new episodes of the Squarespace Guru show every Wednesday by either subscribing through iTunes, subscribing through your podcast app of choice on your phone or tablet, or by listening right on my website squarespace guru dot com slash podcast.I want to talk about a concept called a niche site. And before you think this doesn’t apply to you and your business and stop listening...I would encourage you to consider the concept. I believe every single business should have at least 2 or 3 niche websites. And when done properly, you can dramatically increase your ability to reach your target audience and connect with them in a way that you would never be able to accomplish with just your company website alone.Entrepreneurial and borderline scammy tech nerds have understood the power of a niche site for a long time, and have deployed hundreds of thousands of niche sites since the late 90’s. And have had success running these websites. I know a guy who has over 300 niche websites, and he has set up a bot that will crawl the web searching for articles, and whenever there is an articles that would be a good fit for one of his websites, he scrapes the article...in other words plagiarizes the article, and publishes it on his website. And he’s done a bunch of seo so his sites get a lot of traffic. And he does this because of ad revenue. He doesnt care about the design of the site, he doesnt care if the site is responsive, he doesnt care about the visitors experience on the site, because his goal is generate ad revenue...and so he does all kinds of questionable stuff to generate traffic to the site and collect ad revenue. That’s why historically when you google something like fibromyalgia, the top few results are to crappy websites that have generic articles written about how to deal with the condition and find home remedies and all this stuff. Google now, though is cracking down on these spammy sites. This moron dude that I know, his ad revenue was in the tens of thousands a month, and has this past year been cut down to 1 or 2 thousand a month.That concept is a niche site...but this is not the type of niche site I’m going to be talking about. My niche site concept is an inbound marketing strategy, not a strategy to sell ads. So what is an inbound marketing strategy you ask? it’s any effort you deploy that generates customers to your business without you needing to advertise to them. So a tv ad interrupts what people are doing and is not an inbound marketing tactic...that’s interruption marketing. Cold calling a business is not inbound marketing...that again is interruption marketing. Publishing articles to your blog, and then sharing that content in forums, social media sites, offering ebooks, doing podcasts, publishing videos...all these actions are deemed inbound marketing because you are not interrupting someones day by sending them a marketing message...they discover your marketing message because they are looking for it. If they find your website from a google search...that’s an inbound lead. If they click on a link you shared on Twitter, and sign up for an ebook you are offering...that’s an inbound lead.So if you own a pest control business, and you want to implement an inbound marketing strategy...then you first need to figure out what actions your potential client base are taking to try and find a pest control company. Are they looking up pest control companies in the phone book? Are they asking their friends on social networks for pest control company referrals? Are they searching on Google for pest control companies nearby? Are they looking on yelp for pest control company reviews? Maybe, but if you look at online marketing with this broad sense, your web presence will be competing with all the other pest control companies out there.So how do you stand out?The concept of a niche site in the context of this pest control company, is create a site around just termites...and then create a site just focused on bed bugs...and then create a site just focused on scorpions. And so on and so on. Why? Because there’s a lot less noise out there with these types of specific niche offerings.So let’s look at some numbers. Using Google’s keyword planner, and limiting my search to just a 5 mile radius around my house, I searched for pest control company. And Googles keyword planner gave me back the following data: average monthly searches 500, competition high. So that means that on average there are about 500 searches every month for pest control companies in the Frisco Texas area. Sounds good right, but there’s a high competition level, which means theres a lot of noise on the internet from other pest control companies. So it’s going to hard to break into that and capture some of that traffic. That would take a lot of time and effort and money really to get a pest control company website to compete.Instead, let’s look at some of the related keywords people in this same area are using to find pest control companies: ok here’s one for bed bugs, on a monthly bases on average 1,600 people search for something related to bed bugs. I’ll remind you this is not worldwide, this us just the 5 mile radius around my house. And then another 1,000 searches a month for the term bed bug bites. That’s 2,600 searches a month just for bed bugs! That’s 3 times the amount of searches for pest control companies. So what does this tell you.If you are a pest control company in the Frisco Texas area, you need to create a niche website about bed bugs. You need to blog about bed bugs, you need to record videos about bed bugs, you need to create ebooks about bed bugs and create a brand around just bed bugs. Become the bed bug guy, and dominate that market. When people in that area get bed bugs, who are they going to call? You because your the bed bug guy. They aren't even going to go to google and search for a pest control company...because they already have a bed bug guy. You.Alright you see where I’m going with this? This is the exact thing I’ve done with Squarespace. I’ve created the Squarespace guru brand. My niche site squarespace guru dot com is only a few months old, but my inbound leads of people looking for help with their website, digital marketing efforts, have gone through the roof. We’re struggling just to keep up with proposals, and I’ve now got a new challenge, figuring out how to streamline my workflow to accomidate all the inquiries. Which is a great problem right? I don’t want to say that to dissuade you from contacting us if you need help with something don’t get me wrong.But if you are struggling with your business, and you want more leads than you could ever handle...then you need to create some niche websites. And with Squarespace, that’s incredibly easy. Just sign up for the $8/month plan, and use the same email address and password for each website and you’ll easily be able to quickly toggle between sites. Create a new blog post for each niche site once a week...make sure you are active in the social spaces for each niche site, and you’ll be golden.Be sure to pick the right keywords or phrases that are being searched, use Googles keyword planner to figure that out. And you may need to hire a part time digital marketing person to help you stay on top of all this, but it will definitely be worth your investment. And if you want to hire out some of that work, be sure to get in touch with Get With It Digital. That’s my plug there.So niche sites and Squarespace. Don’t spend a ton of time worrying about the design of the site, Squarespace already has awesome designs...their designers are world class, don’t worry about customizing templates or getting really anal about this or that. It’s a niche site, not your main company site, so the design step is not crucial. Just pick a template and change the wording and images to match your branding, and begin posting blog posts about your niche topic. Once you get 10-15 posts, now you are ready to begin sharing those posts on social sites, industry forums, community forums, linkedin groups, google plus groups all that jazz.Just understand that to create a truly profitable niche site takes several months. It takes time to write all these blog posts, it takes time for your SEO juice to build up, it takes time for your traffic to increase, it takes time to build an audience and it takes time to understand where your audience is spending time online and what they're talking about online.Before I wrap up, I want to announce my upcoming group training session that will be Wednesday next week. A week from today, so that’s August 13th from 7:30pm to 9:30pm. I’ve experimented with several different days and times, and it seems like Wednesdays work the best for most people. And I set it for later in the evening so you can have time to wrap up your work day, get the kids fed, spend some time with the family and then settle in for two hours of awesomeness. This week we’ll be focusing on SEO and will talk about Landing pages, keyword strategies, I’ll demonstrate exactly how to find the right keywords to focus on, and you’ll see my screen and you’ll see exactly how to use the keyword planner. I’ll show you how to create a landing page within squarespace, and we’ll talk about the psychology behind landing page design and conversion stuff. And then following the training we’ll have a question and answer session, and I’ll stay on the conference call as long as I need to to answer everyones questions.I can only have 49 other participants other than myself, so space is limited. typically a 1 on 1 session like this is $325 dollars, but to register for the session next week it’s just $125. Once you register, you’ll get a pdf packet to use throughout the training, which will include my Mastering Squarespace Website planner, which I know a lot of you already have. But it will also include a keyword kit that will help you plan your keywords and narrow the keywords down to just a few. In the kit also will be a Landing Page kit that will help you create your landing pages within Squarespace. It will have examples of good landing pages, and fun stuff like that. Also in the kit there will be a Goal tracker so you can record and track your keyword and landing page conversion rates over time. And then finally you’ll also get an SEO glossary with all the terms you’ll need to know as you build your online presence. And there’s a lot of Squarespace terms in there as well.Ok so that’s this coming Wendesday a week from today from 7:30 to 9:30pm central standard time. You can go ahead and reserve your spot starting today. I’ve had this course several times before with small group training sessions, and they’ve sold out every time, so this large group training session should allow for a lot more people to get a chance to participate. You can register on my Squarespace Guru website, just click on live trainings and you’ll see it down there.CONCLUSION:if you would take a minute and go to itunes and give this show a rating or review I would really appreciate it. If you listen to a bunch of podcasts, I know you probably hear people ask for that, and you likely just ignore it, which is okay...but if you have found my content I’ve given you today helped you in some way, take 30 seconds and tell me about it on iTunes. Those reviews are more valuable to me than a big pile of cash. Reviews not only tell iTunes that this podcast is valuable to folks, but it also serves as validation to those on the fence thinking about subscribing to the show or listening to an episode. If they see several reviews, then they’ll know yep, this is something I’ll invest my time listening to. Also the more reviews and ratings the show receives, the easier it is for me to get sponsorships...and without sponsorships, this podcast couldn’t exist.Alright that wraps up this show, thanks so much for listening. Do you have suggestions for show content or want to ask a question about Squarespace and have me answer your question on the show? If you're on twitter, send me a tweet to @squarespaceguru or leave me a message at 615-547-8858.Alright! That’s it, I’ll see you next week! Did you find this article helpful? Be awesome and help me reach other Squarespace customers in your network! Click one of the social icons below to share this article! :) About The AuthorI'm Greg, and I have a web tech consulting business in Frisco, TX. Since discovering Squarespace in 2012 I talk about the platform every chance I get, and as a result have been given the nickname Squarespace Guru. At first I didn't embrace the nickname since I felt like only Squarespace employees should be given that title...but then I just gave in! I love to teach and help others learn the ways of Squarespace!I am available for hire, but I also have lots of paid and free digital products for you to check out:My Squarespace Services | My Squarespace Video Training | My Squarespace Live Training | My Squarespace Podcast
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